Wednesday, June 17, 2009

An American "Yezhovschina"?

Dr. Stueben: I'm the president of the psychologist society for mental health and adjustment through fulfillment.

Smart: What kind of an organization is that?

Stueben: We're a hate group.

Smart (following a double-take): A hate group?

Stueben: Oh, in the sense that we cure hate and fear. We hate hate. Hate it.

From "All in the Mind," a 1965 episode offering redundant proof that Get Smart was the work of perceptive and prescient satirists.

A September 1996 American Bar Association conference on terrorism and the law in Washington, D.C. presented me with an opportunity I had long coveted.

Among the presenters at that event was former New York Times legal and political affairs columnist Anthony Lewis, long one of the most predictable journalistic voices on the left. One of his favorite tropes was the description of the American Right as "merchants of hate," an expression that seemed to serve as the title for every second or third column Lewis wrote.

If you think this is Wallace Shawn, you've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders: This is actually former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis. The estimable Mr. Shawn -- character actor, vocal artist, and accomplished playwright, is seen below and to the right.

During a break in the proceedings I cornered Lewis, who looked a little less like Wallace Shawn than I had anticipated. By way of introduction, told him (in all sincerity) that I had enjoyed reading his book Gideon's Trumpet as a High School student.

"I've long wanted to ask you something about a subject you frequently address in your column," I continued. "You often make reference to `right-wing hate groups.' Do you acknowledge the existence of left-wing hate groups, as well -- and do you consider them to be a potential threat to society?"

Lewis stood in genuinely stunned silence for a good half a minute or so before tentatively saying, "Well, I suppose there could be such a thing as a left-wing hate group" -- a made with the same grudging, reluctant tone one might use when conceding the possible existence of unicorns, extra-terrestrial intelligence, or cerebral matter inside of Sean Hannity's skull.

Like many others of his political persuasion, Lewis was hard-wired in such a way that he could clearly discern "hate" only when it manifest itself among his political opponents.

He had internalized the conceit that the left, as the embodiment of progress and tolerance, was utterly devoid of hatred and similar base motivations; those impulses are monopolized by the forces of "reaction." Since, according to this ideological model, conservatives are hostage to false consciousness, they really aren't honest about their own motives and indeed cannot be.

Even if they don't consciously hate anybody, the politics of conservatives and other "right-wingers" are objectively hateful, you see, because they oppose inevitable social progress. What other motive could exist for such behavior, apart from simple, irrational belligerence or even outright hatred?

The only politically acceptable hatred, therefore, is to hate the haters -- those whose attitudes and opinions are irreconcilable with progressive prejudices. Where possible, efforts should be made to rehabilitate haters into useful members of the collective -- useful, that is, if only as informants and teaching examples. But when dealing with authentically incorrigible haters -- particularly those unwilling to confess that hatred is their genuine motivation -- sterner measures may be necessary.

This was the logic -- if that word applies -- behind the political use of psychiatry in the Soviet Union: Only someone clinically deranged could hate socialism, and since such people were a danger to themselves and society, they had to be incarcerated in the psiushka(psychiatric gulag) and forcibly cured of their anti-social(ist) tendencies. The heroic former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky recounts his own experience in the Soviet psycho-gulag in his memoir, To Build a Castle.

The "Poisoned Dwarf": Nikolai Yezhov, diminutive in stature, crippled in body and morals, was the intellectual architect and, as head of the NKVD, chief enforcer of Stalin's Great Purge.

The Soviet use of psychiatry was an outgrowth of the Regime's longstanding policy of pre-emption: Threats to "stability" and "social order" had to be recognized and aborted before they reached maturity.

This concept was embedded in the Soviet Union's Fundamental Principles of Penal Legislation, which identified the central mission of the state's law enforcement apparatus (chiefly the Ckeha or secret police, by whatever acronym it was later known) as that of identifying, and removing the threat of, "socially dangerous persons."

This notion was encapsulated in Article 58 of the penal code, which served as the legal foundation for the Soviet regime's perpetual war of terror against dissent.

The law dealing with "socially dangerous persons," observes the authoritative Black Book of Communism, dealt with "any activity that, without directly aiming to overthrow or weaken the Soviet regime, was in itself `an attack on the political or economic achievements of the revolutionary proletariat.' The law thus not only punished intentional transgressions but also proscribed possible or unintentional acts."

And the term "socially dangerous persons" itself was based on "extremely elastic categories" that permitted the imprisonment of people in the gulag "even in the absence of guilt." This is because that the Soviet rulers were pleased to call "the law" specified that incarceration, exile, or execution could be employed as means of "social protection" against "anyone classified as a danger to society, either for a specific crime that has been committed or when, even if exonerated of a particular crime, the person is still reckoned to pose a threat to society."

Note carefully here how Soviet "law" discarded entirely with the idea of punishing overt acts, focusing instead on the supposed motivations of those deemed innately threatening to the regime. Note as well how the system was rigged to nullify exculpatory verdicts.

Of course, the Soviet government punished common criminals, at least those it didn't recruit into the ranks of its enforcement agencies. But as Paul Gregory points out in his book Lenin's Brain, most of those imprisoned in the gulag were there not because of what they had done, but because of what the state suspected they could do; they were being isolated from the rest of society "because of actual or suspected opposition to the Soviet state."

Yezhov, who came to be known as "Stalin's Poison Dwarf," lusted to be head of the secret police. He secured that post following the assassination of Stalin's rival Sergei Kirov, an act of terrorism orchestrated by Stalin that inaugurated the campaign of official terrorism known as the Great Purge. Yezhov toppled his predecessor as head of the NKVD, GenrikhYagoda, by accusing the old Bolshevik of being inadequately zealous in finding and eliminating Stalin's enemies. Yezhov distinguished himself by his murderous zeal until he, too, was denounced, tortured into multiple confessions, and executed.

Would-be commissarina for political correctness Bonnie Erbe, wearing red, of course. For roughly three years, Yezhov conducted a reign of terror and persecution that came to be known as the Yezhovschina -- the "Era of Yezhov."

Viewed in the context of the Soviet regime's decades-long campaign of repression and terror, Yezhov's role in building the body count was relatively modest. The same really can't be said of his distinctive contribution to the art and practice of totalitarianism, namely the reductionist claim that all anti-statist activism will eventually beget terrorism.

Echoes of Yezhov's claim, and the Soviet doctrine of dealing pre-emptively with "socially dangerous persons," can also be heard in demands for federal action to imprison "haters" even in the absence of overt criminal acts.

“If yesterday’s Holocaust Museum slaying … is not a clarion call for banning hate speech, I don’t know what is," shrilled Erbe, insisting that something must be done about ridding the Internet and the public dialogue of hate speech." But she wouldn't stop there; the purge would mean doing away with the "haters," as well.

Referring to the accused murderers of security guard Stephen Johns, abortionist George Tiller, and military recruiter William Long (whose alleged murderer was an American convert to Islam), Erbe insists: “It’s not enough to prosecute these murders as murders. They are hate-motivated crimes and each of these men had been under some sort of police surveillance prior to their actions. Isn’t it time we started rounding up promoters of hate before they kill?”

String up the barbed wire, sharpen the guillotine, fire up the crematoria: There are haters in our midst to be dealt with!

Appropriated language takes on a new meaning in the liberal laundry, where a word is bleached of prior meaning and then tinted to suit the liberal bias. The Palm Beach Post attempted to try a new color on the word hate with the title of an opinion essay: Hate=Terrorism. Unfortunately, the editorial writer was not informed on the new take on terrorism: extremism is the new term for terrorism. So, the article fell flat. Here are some other ringers:Racism is the new word for oppression, and it only indicates oppression by whites against people of color. People of color cannot be racist: they are oppressed instead.

Power to the People means power to you if you are a people of color. If you are not, you can go squat.

Gender does not refer to sex. Gender is an identity construct foisted upon unsuspecting innocent children that makes them fixed in modules called feminine or masculine.

Discover: a chance to waste time and money on workbooks to uncover your appropiate self, not gender-fied. Discover!

Illegal immigration: a word if used in any context by anyone other than a died-in-wool liberal will elicit the cry "Racist" and the right to terminate dialogue.

IMO, conservatives/libertarians/freedom lovers need to do a much better job of reaching out to people with the truth of their ideas.

The joys of controlling your own life, diet, employment are more important and life-enhancing than any "benefits" accrued by the nanny-state. That the words, conservative and conservation have the same root and that is a good thing.

However too often talking with conservatives or reading their blogs, they are too busy in defensive mode or lashing out at enemies and end up confirming the very negative stereotypes that they are being plastered with by the media.

I, too, am amazed at the similarity of the facial features of Yezhov and Obama.

The real difference: Yezhov was not hypocritical as to his intentions, whereas, with Obama, ...

An even more important difference: While Yezhov was a bureaucratic functionary within the Soviet oppression machine who was widely feared and despised by the citizenry, his ideological descendant, the Obamunist, is revered as a God-Messiah, making him infinitely more dangerous.

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark's list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with an $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

ACMA's blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today, but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove "prohibited" pages and even links to prohibited pages.

Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government's censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.

"The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship," Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

The site has also published Thailand's internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions.

Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.

Electronic Frontiers Australia said the leak of the Danish blacklist and ACMA's subsequent attempts to block people from viewing it showed how easy it would be for ACMA's own blacklist - which is secret - to be leaked onto the web once it is handed to ISPs for filtering.

"We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and a document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government's own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future," EFA said.

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COMMENTS: Thought crimes. Blacklisted websites. No-fly lists. Surveillance. People grabbed off the street and shipped abroad to secret torture prisons. All secret - nobody knows what is in these lists and laws or how extensive they are. Now, Australia too. I knew they had Internet censorship in China, but I always thought Australia was such a butch country - Crocodile Dundee, descendants of criminal rascals and all that. If the Statists can do this in Australia, (and Denmark too apparently - where did all those Vikings go?) can America be far behind? How long before it becomes illegal even to read Pro Libertate?

God bless the Iranian people. Is Iran the last freedom-loving nation on earth? Perhaps that's why our US Government and those of Israel and most of Europe want to destroy it.

How curious a world we inhabit.

Time, methinks, for les citoyens to begin sharpening the blades of the guillotines for the necks of our self-appointed lords and masters.

LG. When the "authorities" hide behind the all smothering embrace of "security" in order to shield themselves from question or accountability then you know the game is over. That time has been upon us for quite a while. What Australia has done is essentially muzzle any dissent under its "thought crime" edicts. Who is to say that an online provocateur of their own wouldn't simply post links for the purpose of shutting down their enemies.

A lot of the hate I've seen coming from everyday people on the left is brainwashing by the media leaving them as useful idiots. A classic example of this would be the deep unwarranted hate for Richard Nixon. Frankly speaking Nixon was an angle along side William Jefferson Clinton. What the big problem was with Nixon was, Nixon as a young congressman from CA blew the lid off of Alger Hiss and White. This was a huge black eye for our first Marxist president FDR. The left always said they would get even with Nixon for doing that. If anyone has any doughs about that just bring up Nixon to a liberal and watch them start foaming at the mouth and going off the deep end. It happens every single time, see for yourself. The bottom line is much of this left wing hate is based in Marxist programing feed to people through the left leaning media. But what do I know.

Bottom line, in the last twenty years, can you list a SINGLE INSTANCE in the US where an avowed "liberal" shot someplace up with a rifle over politics?

Anyone? Anyone? (crickets chirping)..

That's the problem, Liberals don't shoot people who disagree with them. Many Many Many conservatives seem to think that it is OK to kill people who disagree with them. Seems like right-wingers are shooting people every week these days.

The reason the right is so up in arms about the DHS talking about "right wing" terrorists, is because it hits close to home with a lot of people on the right who talk a lot of hate about people who don't agree with them.

I usually love this site, very anti-authoritarian, very libertarian, but there is a lot of hate on the right, and the right is finally being called out on it.

There is a lot of hate in politics. Mencken was exactly right when he said that politics is all about the incitement and mobilization of hatreds.

People of whatever persuasion who seek to politicize life are propagating hatred and generally mobilizing it as well.

That hatred takes tangible form in different ways; some people grab a gun and commit acts of personalized violence (I've not stinted in covering episodes involving "right-wingers" such as James Adkisson -- see http://www.lewrockwell.com/grigg/grigg-w79.html).

Others empower the state to carry out acts of collectivist violence, whether they take the form of the annihilation of the Branch Davidians or the subordination of others and the theft of their property through "law." Don't forget that everything the State does is backed by the implicit, and often overt, threat of lethal force.

What logic is there in permitting eccentric violent acts of individual criminals to enhance the lethal power the State exercises over all of us?

Well, when the "collectivist state" starts rounding people up and putting them in "re-education" camps, we can revisit this argument. But until then, I'd say it's a bit premature and paranoid.

What does it say about the state of political discourse in this country when the party out of power (democrat or conservative) truly believes that the majority party wants to lock them up, or kill them?

Anonymous 11:19AM you have a bad case of label-itis. Hopefully Will's follow up comment will help to straighten out your thinking.Were the tens of millions of people murdered by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao murdered by "left-wingers" or "right-wingers"? Does it even matter what we call them?You write: "liberals don't shoot people who disagree with them", but the fact is that people who espouse what are usually regarded as "liberal" ideologies routinely use the coercive power of the state to murder people by the millions, often whether or not they disagree with them.

"Bottom line, in the last twenty years, can you list a SINGLE INSTANCE in the US where an avowed "liberal" shot someplace up with a rifle over politics?"

No, individual American liberals don't shoot their ideological enemies. They just send them bombs through the mail and then issue fruitloop Marxist 'manifestos'. How quickly and thoroughly the media downplayed the Unibomber; how quickly the public forgets.

Besides, hateful leftists don't need to commit violence themselves. They have the State to do that for them. That's why Palestinian civilians are more likely to kill Israeli innocents than Israeli civilians are to kill Palestinian innocents--Israeli haters have the State to kill for them, Palestinian haters do not. The fact that our State often kills those who the Right hates is irrelevant to our violent Rightists; it's the feeling of disenfranchisement that motivates them.

What does it say about the state of political discourse in this country when the party out of power (democrat or conservative) truly believes that the majority party wants to lock them up, or kill them?

That's a good and very perceptive question.

Human beings generally compose threats out of their own fears, and the process seems to run in reverse as well.

The situation you describe suggests to me that people in both dominant political factions understand, at some level, that the state has accumulated too much power, and believe we're in a zero-sum situation in which either faction, once in power, can all but annihilate the other. And that fear is not entirely without merit.

Incidentally, Madison's principle of political self-defense -- we must "take alarm at the first experiment on [our] liberties" -- makes "paranoia" about government power little less than a civic obligation

Well, when the "collectivist state" starts rounding people up and putting them in "re-education" camps, we can revisit this argument. But until then, I'd say it's a bit premature and paranoid.

Won't that be a little late to revisit the argument? "Hey, don't put me on that train to the detention camp, I want to revisit the argument about state power!" Will mentioned a book called The Black Book of Communism. There is a method to the downhill slide from petty authoritarianism to full blown totalitarian mass murder. The same pattern is followed every time, and if people learn to recognize that pattern, there is a chance to prevent disaster. But if the machine gets a full head of steam, there is no dissent, no argument, no chance to calmly debate a demand like Commissar Erbe made.

"What does it say about the state of political discourse in this country when the party out of power (democrat or conservative) truly believes that the majority party wants to lock them up, or kill them?"

Again with the labels. I'm not a member of any party, but I fear those in power regardless of party. I don't think this fear can really be considered paranoia when the state issues documents demonizing large segments of the population (the majority, in fact) and painting everyone with the same broad brush. In fact, I'd say it's clear that there is a larger agenda being implemented that has nothing to do with party or with any real threat by this demonized segment of the population either to the people in general or to legitimate government.Meanwhile, the inexorable march towards total state power continues full steam ahead regardless of which party is in power.

I couldn't agree more with Isaac's comment. One of the greatest allies a budding authoritarianism has is the widespread attitude that "it can't happen here". Solzhenitsyn likened the growth of the authoritarian State to a cancer, and the time to find and eliminate a cancer is early, before it can metastasize.

I've been following developments in Iran to the extent that I can, and have commented about them in radio interviews but not yet in print.

I find myself torn between admiration for the obvious and genuine courage of freedom-seeking Iranians, on the one hand, and disgust over the efforts by U.S. image-manipulators to frame what's happening in Tehran in terms that make overt intervention in that nation's affairs likely. Hey, that's a great idea, 'specially after it turned out so well last time....

Mousavi may be a genuine reformer, but he's not the type of person likely to move Iran in a Madisonian direction were he to prevail. And there's some evidence that the CIA, NED (National Endowment for Democracy), and other assets of Washington's nation-breaking apparatus are at work in Iran, as well. So while I'm inspired by at least some of what's taking place I'm not optimistic about the likely outcome.

Thanks for your reply. I was curious if you'd paid any attention to the reactions of average Americans camped out on the internet for well over a week now cheering on the protesters, doing everything they can within their limited abilities to help them accomplish their goals. Everything from setting up proxies to help them get around internet clamp downs so accurate information can get out, to providing information about such things as bomb making and chemical agent antidotes.

Of all the analysis I've seen in the media regarding the role the internet has played in this situation, none captured or discussed this shared freedom-fighting kinship many Americans have suddenly developed with the Iranian protesters.

I was wondering to what extent you were aware of these activities, and if you saw any hope in them for our own sakes.

In several internet communities where this support is being expressed, discussions have run the gamut identifying parallels between the two nations, from the allegedly stolen presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, to the alleged ACORN voter fraud in 2008, to references to Kent State violence, the mass arrests at the 2004 RNC convention in NYC to the every day thuggery of local law enforcement.

In the last week I've seen a rather bold awakening of the freedom fighting spirit in these people and can't help but wonder if the Iranian protesters will turn out to be a surprising new source of inspiration for many of us.

All of this touchy-feeling concern for the campaign of Mousavi and the "stolen" election is quite absurd!

The man is reportedly one of the key figures that wanted Iran to move forward with its nuclear program (remember... the BAD thing we keep hammering them with all the time) and likely a key figure in bombing attacks in Lebanon and elsewhere in the 80's... Remember the marine barracks? So before you cry any more Argentinian tears for the wag the dog circus being produced for you on TeeVee it would be best to take pause and THINK!

MoT, I don't think you understand what I'm trying to say. Mousavi is THEIR candidate, chosen for their own reasons, and THEY rose up to dispute the official results of the election.

Nobody cares about Mousavi's past. They (initially) cared about the promises he made for the future, including more respect for civil liberties among their citizens.

Then upon the violent suppression of their protests by their own government it became a different fight altogether.

Further, this is not a wag-the-dog situation foisted upon us by the media. It took the media a full WEEK to wake up to the fact that the news they were reporting initially was grossly biased in favor of the regime. Our reaction to the protests began and remains a product of the unfettered, unfiltered internet.

Additionally, it does not matter now whether our government sowed these seeds of unrest, as I suspect it did, and suspect it's not exactly what our government had in mind by doing so. What matters now is that the people of Iran grew into a larger force on its own to stand up to its own government in pursuit of self-determination as a nation.

The questions I posed to Will were an attempt to focus on the reactions to this uprising by the American internet community, wondering whether he recognized a new sliver of hope for our own future.

This nation, THIS NATION, kills thousands, or aids those that do, displaces millions, and the news is put through a BRITA filter of censorship before seeing the light of day, if at all. Where are the lapdog media and internet armchair pundits with their nightly, and highly advertised, prime time foam flecked denunciations of decapitated men women and children blown to bits with OUR hardware? With money stolen from us to do it. Curiously and hypocritically silent.

additionally, it does not matter now whether our government sowed these seeds of unrest, as I suspect it did, and suspect it's not exactly what our government had in mind by doing so....

What the hell...!!! They take 400 million of OUR money to assassinate and destabilize another country and you say it doesn't "matter"!!! That good old uncle Sammy only has the best of intentions in the depths of his cancerous heart by stirring the pot and coincidentally through this meddling may well have brought about the deaths of those people...! Are you insane?

What matters now is that the people of Iran grew into a larger force on its own to stand up to its own government in pursuit of self-determination as a nation.

Says who? And how do you KNOW for a fact that anything you see are the FACTS at all? American or British network news channels never lie? They lie and distort all the time. It's job ONE. Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran.

This nation, THIS NATION, kills thousands, or aids those that do, displaces millions, and the news is put through a BRITA filter of censorship before seeing the light of day, if at all. Where are the lapdog media and internet armchair pundits with their nightly, and highly advertised, prime time foam flecked denunciations of decapitated men women and children blown to bits with OUR hardware? With money stolen from us to do it. Curiously and hypocritically silent.

MoT, I agree with you in those respects. The hypocrisy of our government's posturing and the media lapdogs is astounding. That's not the point of this particular conversation.

What the hell...!!! They take 400 million of OUR money to assassinate and destabilize another country and you say it doesn't "matter"!!! That good old uncle Sammy only has the best of intentions in the depths of his cancerous heart by stirring the pot and coincidentally through this meddling may well have brought about the deaths of those people...! Are you insane?

No I'm not insane. I never supported the funneling of our tax dollars into covert destabilization operations, and never will. I said it doesn't matter now that it likely transpired, because the situation in Iran has grown beyond a measely $400 m worth of damage, and hopefully will continue to grow beyond it to eventually render Iran a more powerful nation that is more resistant to such interference. We can't get the money back, and we can't change what they did with it, therefore it does not matter. Personally I'd rather dazzle them with the wonders of the free market and let them choose their own resultant paths. But if a government (ours) were to overtly dangle free markets in their faces, they're no longer free markets are they?

Says who? And how do you KNOW for a fact that anything you see are the FACTS at all? American or British network news channels never lie? They lie and distort all the time. It's job ONE. Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran.

I'm about as sure of the facts as I view them in this situation as you are. What part my statement that our reactions are a product of the unfiltered internet did you not comprehend? The media has been a very poor source of information for about 2 decades now, or more.

MoT: This nation, THIS NATION, kills thousands, or aids those that do, displaces millions, and the news is put through a BRITA filter of censorship before seeing the light of day, if at all.

While that's not the point of this conversation, it's important to note that many people here in America are recognizing the hypocrisy both the actions of our government/military, and the blatant media biases, through their unfiltered exposure to Iranian protesters. Did you miss my earlier post in which I stated the conversations we're having online include identifying parallels to our own situation? In the forums I inhabit alone, several self-avowed gun grabbing liberals have publicly changed their stances on the 2nd Amendment.

During one of his recent press briefings, Obama was chiding Ahmadenejad for suppressing eyewitness accounts of the crackdown violence against the protesters and Helen Thomas, bless her little heart, immediately asked him in that same spirit if he'd be releasing the torture photos.

MoT: through this meddling may well have brought about the deaths of those people

Suddenly you're not a proponent of personal responsibility? These people stood up fully aware that they may not make it home each day. If they die in these protests, they die at the hands of their own oppressors. Let me share an excerpt from a young Iranian student's blog:I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I'm listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It's worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I'm two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow's children..."

MoT: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Iran.

I'm not so sure about that. Of course the chicken hawks are drooling at the prospect of charging in to save the day, but the vast majority of politically active people hanging out on the internet watching it all unfold have reached a very mature decision, even though their hearts break to reach out and help these people: this is the Iranians' fight. They are in charge of their own future and the future of their country. This concession is an aspect of the awakening I've seen across the internet that nurtures hope for our own future.

MoT: This nation, THIS NATION, kills thousands, or aids those that do, displaces millions, and the news is put through a BRITA filter of censorship before seeing the light of day, if at all.

While that's not the point of this conversation, it's important to note that many people here in America are recognizing the hypocrisy of the actions of our government/military, and the blatant media biases, through their unfiltered internet exposure to Iranian protesters. Did you miss my earlier post in which I stated the conversations we're having online include identifying parallels to our own situation? In the forums I inhabit alone, several self-avowed gun grabbing liberals have publicly changed their stances on the 2nd Amendment. This can only be a good thing.

During one of his recent press briefings, Obama was chiding Ahmadenijad for suppressing eyewitness accounts of the crackdown violence against the protesters and Helen Thomas, bless her little heart, immediately asked him in that same spirit if he'd be releasing the torture photos. This brief exchange made the rounds on the internet and was discussed at length, but not one peep out of the media.

MoT: through this meddling may well have brought about the deaths of those people

Suddenly you're not a proponent of personal responsibility? These people stood up fully aware that they may not make it home each day. If they die in these protests, they die at the hands of their own oppressors. Let me share an excerpt from a young Iranian student's blog:

"I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I'm listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It's worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I'm two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow's children..." (translated link, scroll to 3:09 pm)

I'm not so sure about that. Of course the chicken hawks are drooling at the prospect of charging in to save the day, but the vast majority of politically active people hanging out on the internet watching it all unfold have reached a very mature conclusion, even though their hearts break to reach out and help these people: this is the Iranians' fight. They are in charge of their own future and the future of their country.

McCain, Graham and Lieberman have just announced their intentions to propose legislation to authorize our government to take actions to keep the lines of communication open for the Iranian protesters, to boost radio signals and enhance cell phone reception, and maintain some sort of internet connectivity for them by methods not yet proposed. As much as we on the internet have done to help the Iranians try to communicate their plight to the world, and as frustrating as our personal limitations are in those efforts, the vast majority of us recognize that any official government action in this regard would be disastrous for the Iranians and for us.

This concession by average Americans is just one aspect of the awakening I've seen across the internet that nurtures hope for our own future. I am still hoping that Will stumbles upon enough time to consider these reactions by the internet community and eventually post his thoughts about them.

"In 1935, an individual best described as five feet of feculent malice added another key element to the Soviet formula for institutionalized terror. A foul, vulgar little creature named Nikolai Yezhov, an intimate associate of Stalin, wrote a pseudo-academic paper contending that any form of political opposition should be treated as incipient terrorism."

For the historical record, Janet Napolitano is five feet, seven inches tall.